Tag: Juno mission

It’s difficult to imagine the magnitude of storms on Jupiter. The gas giant’s most visible atmospheric feature, the Great Red Spot, may be getting smaller, but one hundred years ago, it was about 40,000 km (25,000 miles) in diameter, or three times Earth’s diameter.

Jupiter’s atmosphere also features thunderheads that are five times taller than Earth’s: a whopping 64 km (40 miles) from bottom to top. Its atmosphere is not entirely understood, though NASA’s Juno spacecraft is advancing our understanding. The planet may contain strange things like a layer of liquid metallic hydrogen.

Now a group of scientists are combining the power of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Gemini Observatory and the Juno spacecraft to probe Jupiter’s atmosphere, and the awe-inspiring storms that spawn there.

Artist Mik Petter has created a vibrant new piece of art based on JunoCam images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS). The piece makes use of fractals, which are recursive mathematical creations; increasingly complex patterns that are similar to each other, yet never exactly the same.

Though it looks like it to us, Jupiter’s clouds do no form a flat surface. Some of its clouds rise up above the surrounding cloud tops. The two bright spots in the right center of this image are much higher than the surrounding clouds.

In a death-defying maneuver for the spacecraft, NASA’s Juno has completed an unprecedented and unplanned engine burn. The purpose? To save the spacecraft’s “life,” or at least the rest of its mission to Jupiter.

Jupiter casts a deep, dark shadow. Dark enough, in fact, to effectively kill Juno if it flies through it. Rather than let the spacecraft spend 12 battery-draining hours in Jupiter’s shadow, and then attempt a risky resuscitation on the other side, NASA took another course of action: a 10.5 hour burn of Juno’s reaction thrusters that will steer it clear of Jupiter’s life-draining shadow.

The JunoCam onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft continues to provide we Earthbound humans with a steady stream of stunning images of Jupiter. We can’t get enough of the gas giant’s hypnotic, other-worldly beauty. This image of Io passing over Jupiter is the latest one to awaken our sense of wonder.

This image was processed by Kevin Gill, a NASA software engineer who has produced other stunning images of Jupiter.

There’s something about Jupiter that mesmerizes those who gaze at it. It’s intricate, dazzling clouds are a visual representation of the laws of nature that’s hard to turn away from. And even though the Juno spacecraft has been at Jupiter for almost three years now, and has delivered thousands of images of the gas giant’s colourful, churning clouds, we can’t seem to satisfy our appetite.

Thanks to a mission extension, NASA’s Juno probe continues to orbit Jupiter, being only the second spacecraft in history to do so. Since it arrived around the gas giant on July 5th, 2016, Juno has managed to gather a great deal of information on Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetic and gravity environment, and its interior structure.

In that time, the probe has also managed to capture some breathtaking images of Jupiter as well. But on December 21st, during the probe’s sixteenth orbit of the gas giant, the Juno probe changed things up when four of its cameras captured images of the Jovian moon Io, showcasing its polar regions and spotting what appeared to be a volcanic eruption.

When the Juno spacecraft arrived in orbit around Jupiter in 2016, it became the second spacecraft in history to study Jupiter directly – the first being the Galileo probe, which orbited Jupiter between 1995 and 2003. With every passing orbit (known as a perijove, which take place every 53 days), the spacecraft has revealed more about Jupiter’s atmosphere, weather patterns, and magnetic environment.

In addition, Juno recently discovered something interesting about Jupiter’s closest orbiting moon Io. Based on data collected by its Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, Juno detected a new heat source close to the south pole of Io that could indicate the presence of a previously undiscovered volcano. This is just the latest discovery made by the probe during its mission, which NASA recently extended to 2021.

Annotated image of the new heat source in the southern hemisphere of the Jupiter moon Io. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

The infrared data was collected on Dec. 16th, 2017, when the Juno spacecraft was about 470,000 km (290,000 mi) away from Io. As Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator from the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Rome, explained in a recent NASA press release:

“The new Io hotspot JIRAM picked up is about 200 miles (300 kilometers) from the nearest previously mapped hotspot. We are not ruling out movement or modification of a previously discovered hot spot, but it is difficult to imagine one could travel such a distance and still be considered the same feature.”

Aside from Juno and Galileo, many NASA missions have visited or passed through the Jovian System in the past few decades. These have including the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions in 1973/74, the Voyager 1 and 2 missions in 1979, and the Cassini and New Horizons missions in 2000 and 2007, respectively. Each of these missions managed to snap pictures of the Jovians moons on their way to the outer Solar System.

Annotated image of the new heat source close to the south pole of Io, with a scale depicting the range of temperatures displayed in the infrared image. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Combined with ground-based observations, scientists have accounted for over 150 volcanoes on the surface of Io so far, with estimates claiming there could over 400 in total. Since it entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 4th, 2016, the Juno probe has traveled nearly 235 million km (146 million mi) from one pole to other. On July 16th, Juno will conduct its 13th perijove maneuver, once again passing low over Jupiter’s cloud tops at a distance of about 3,400 km (2,100 mi).

During these flybys, Juno probes beneath the upper atmosphere to study the planet’s auroras to learn more about it’s structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. By shedding light on these characteristics, the Juno probe will also teach us more about the planet’s origins and evolution. This in turn will teach scientists a great deal more about the formation and evolution of our Solar System, and perhaps how life began here.

Since it arrived in orbit around Jupiter in July of 2016, the Juno mission has been sending back vital information about the gas giant’s atmosphere, magnetic field and weather patterns. With every passing orbit – known as perijoves, which take place every 53 days – the probe has revealed things about Jupiter that scientists will rely on to learn more about its formation and evolution.

Interestingly, some of the most recent information to come from the mission involves how two of its moons affect one of Jupiter’s most interesting atmospheric phenomenon. As they revealed in a recent study, an international team of researchers discovered how Io and Ganymede leave “footprints” in the planet’s aurorae. These findings could help astronomers to better understand both the planet and its moons.

Much like aurorae here on Earth, Jupiter’s aurorae are produced in its upper atmosphere when high-energy electrons interact with the planet’s powerful magnetic field. However, as the Juno probe recently demonstrated using data gathered by Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) and Jovian Energetic Particle Detector Instrument (JEDI), Jupiter’s magnetic field is significantly more powerful than anything we see on Earth.

In addition to reaching power levels 10 to 30 times greater than anything higher than what is experienced here on Earth (up to 400,000 electron volts), Jupiter’s norther and southern auroral storms also have oval-shaped disturbances that appear whenever Io and Ganymede pass close to the planet. As they explain in their study:

“A northern and a southern main auroral oval are visible, surrounded by small emission features associated with the Galilean moons. We present infrared observations, obtained with the Juno spacecraft, showing that in the case of Io, this emission exhibits a swirling pattern that is similar in appearance to a von Kármán vortex street.”

A Von Kármán vortex street, a concept in fluid dynamics, is basically a repeating pattern of swirling vortices caused by a disturbance. In this case, the team found evidence of a vortex streaming for hundreds of kilometers when Io passed close to the planet, but which then disappeared as the moon moved farther away from the planet.

Reconstructed view of Jupiter’s northern lights through the filters of the Juno Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument on Dec. 11, 2016, as the Juno spacecraft approached Jupiter, passed over its poles, and plunged towards the equator. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Bertrand Bonfond

The team also found two spots in the auroral belt created by Ganymede, where the extended tail from the main auroral spots eventually split in two. While the team was not sure what causes this split, they venture that it could be caused by interaction between Ganymede and Jupiter’s magnetic field (since Ganymede is the only Jovian moon to have its own magnetic field).

These features, they claim, suggest that magnetic interactions between Jupiter and Ganymede are more complex than previously thought. They also indicate that neither of the footprints were where they expected to find them, which suggests that models of the planet’s magnetic interactions with its moons may be in need of revision.

Studying Jupiter’s magnetic storms is one of the primary goals of the Juno mission, as is learning more about the planet’s interior structure and how it has evolved over time. In so doing, astronomers hope to learn more about how the Solar System came to be. NASA also recently extended the mission to 2021, giving it three more years to gather data on these mysteries.

And be sure to enjoy this video of the Juno mission, courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

For centuries, astronomers have been observing Jupiter swirling surface and been awed and mystified by its appearance. The mystery only deepened when, in 1995, the Galileo spacecraft reached Jupiter and began studying its atmosphere in depth. Since that time, astronomers have puzzled over its colored bands and wondered if they are just surface phenomenon, or something that goes deeper.

Thanks to the Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since July of 2016, scientists are now much closer to answering that question. This past week, three new studies were published based on Juno data that presented new findings on Jupiter’s magnetic field, its interior rotation, and how deep its belts extend. All of these findings are revising what scientists think of Jupiter’s atmosphere and its inner layers.

Jupiter’s South Pole, taken during a Juno flyby on Dec 16th, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/David Marriott

The research effort was led by Professo Kaspi and Dr. Galanti, who in addition to being the lead authors on the second study were co-authors on the other two. The pair have been preparing for this analysis even before Juno launched in 2011, during which time they built mathematical tools to analyze the gravitational field data and get a better grasp of Jupiter’s atmosphere and its dynamics.

All three studies were based on data gathered by Juno as it passed from one of Jupiter’s pole to the other every 53-days – a maneuver known as a “perijove”. With each pass, the probe used its advanced suite of instruments to peer beneath the surface layers of the atmosphere. In addition, radio waves emitted by the probe were measured to determine how they were shifted by the planet’s gravitational field with each orbit.

As astronomers have understood for some time, Jupiter’s jets flow in bands from east to west and west to east. In the process, they disrupt the even distribution of mass on the planet. By measuring changes in the planet’s gravity field (and thus this mass imbalance), Dr. Kaspi and Dr. Galanti’s analytical tools were able to calculate how deep the storms extend beneath the surface and what it’s interior dynamics are like.

Above all, the team expected to find anomalies because of the way the planet deviates from being a perfect sphere – which is due to how its rapid rotation squishes it slightly. However, they also looked for additional anomalies that could be explained due to the presence of powerful winds in the atmosphere.

This image from Juno’s JunoCam captured the south pole in visible light only. It’s a puzzle why the north and south poles are so similar, yet have a different number of cyclones. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

In the first study, Dr. Iess and his colleagues used precise Doppler tracking of the Juno spacecraft to conduct measurements of Jupiter’s gravity harmonics – both even and odd. What they determined was Jupiter’s magnetic field has a north-south asymmetry, which is indicative of interior flows in the atmosphere.

Analysis of this asymmetry was followed-up on in the second study, where Dr. Kaspi, Dr. Galanti and their colleagues used the variations in the planet’s gravity field to calculate the depth of Jupiter’s east-west jet streams. By measuring how these jets cause an imbalance in Jupiter’s gravity field, and even disrupt the mass of the planet, they concluded that they extend to a depth of 3000 km (1864 mi).

From all this, Prof. Guillot and his colleagues conducted the third study, where they used the previous findings about the planet’s gravitational field and jet streams and compared the results to predictions of interior models. From this, they determined that the interior of the planet rotates almost like a rigid body and that differential rotation decreases farther down.

In addition, they found that the zones of atmospheric flow extended to between 2,000 km (1243 mi) and 3,500 km (2175 mi) deep, which was consistent with the constraints obtained from the odd gravitational harmonics. This depth also corresponds to the point where electric conductivity would become large enough that magnetic drag would suppress differential rotation.

Based on their findings, the team also calculated that Jupiter’s atmosphere constitutes 1% of its total mass. For comparison, Earth’s atmosphere is less than a millionth of its total mass. Still, as Dr. Kaspi explained in Weizzmann Institute press release, this was rather surprising:

“That is much more than anyone thought and more than what has been known from other planets in the Solar System. That is basically a mass equal to three Earths moving at speeds of tens of meters per second.”

All told, these studies have shed new light on the Jupiter’s atmospheric dynamics and interior structure. At present, the subject of what resides at Jupiter’s core remains unresolved. But the researchers hope to analyze further measurements made by Juno to see whether Jupiter has a solid core and (if so) to determine its mass. This in turn will help astronomers learn a great deal about the Solar System’s history and formation.

In addition, Kaspi and Galanti are looking to use some of the same methods they developed to characterize Jupiter’s jet streams to tackle its most iconic feature – Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. In addition to determining how deep this storm extends, they also hope to learn why this storm has persisted for so many centuries, and why it has been noticeably shrinking in recent years.

The Juno mission is expected to wrap up in July of 2018. Barring any extensions, the probe will conduct a controlled deorbit into Jupiter’s atmosphere after conducting perijove 14. However, even after the mission is over, scientists will be analyzing the data it has collected for years to come. What this reveals about the Solar System’s largest planet will also go a long way towards informing out understanding of the Solar System.

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Episode 660: Crew Dragon Reaches the Station. What it Took to Replace the Space Shuttle

On Sunday, May 31st, 2020, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley docked with the International Space Station. This was a tremendous accomplishment for SpaceX and NASA, giving the United States the capability of launching its own astronauts, and no longer relying on its Russian partners.

This was the 5th time that US astronauts went into orbit on a new kind of space vehicle, following in the footsteps of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle.